


The One Where They Get Married Via Doppler Manipulation

by TrashyTime



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Bottom Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Doppelganger, Dubious Consent, Emotionally Constipated Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, For a given value, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Whump, M/M, POV Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Eskel (The Witcher), Protective Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Wedding, ends happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:28:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27909001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrashyTime/pseuds/TrashyTime
Summary: Created for the Consent Issues Exchange.Geralt thinks he has really hurt Eskel. He's so confused, and he never anticipated his actions would hurt Eskel. That is because they hadn't. But that doesn't stop Geralt from piling on the self recrimination and shame. He figures out it was manipulation by a doppler halfway through the wedding he was manipulated into manipulating Eskel into. For Eskel, this wedding is for Geralt, and he owes Geralt, and loves him enough to do it. For Geralt, he can't back out, it will really actually hurt Eskel.Somehow they both self sacrifice and guilt their way into retiring together to the country as husbands.
Relationships: Eskel/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12
Collections: Consent Issues Exchange 2020





	The One Where They Get Married Via Doppler Manipulation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BrighteyedJill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrighteyedJill/gifts).



> Tags covered from prompts, in no particular order:  
> Older Witchers xcon Geralt & Eskel (Witcher videos games) ×Attitude - Aggressor Taunts Victim ×Attitude - Victim Believes They Don't Deserve to Say No ×Attitude - Victim Unsure of Own Consent ×Any makes Geralt & Eskel mxcon ×Doppler-as-Eskel xcons Geralt of Rivia (books) ×Humiliation - Slut Shaming ×Mxcon - One Victim Doesn't Know the Other is Being Forced Into It ×Mxcon - Trying to Be Gentle ×Coercion - Using Knowledge of Past Relationships to Manipulate 
> 
> So please be aware for yourselves going into this.

Geralt swallowed hard as he closed the door to the lavish bathing chamber that was part of his rooms here in the castle. Everything was a swirling churning mess inside him. He had never expected that the contract he took to handle a wraith in this castle’s catacombs would lead him to bump into Eskel. Just like he had never expected Eskel to take a contract breaking the curse for a Duke, that amounted to being his bodyguard until he had saved him from impending death three times. 

Geralt didn’t know what to feel, what to think, and had struggled with the desire to go to Eskel, right up until Eskel had come to him. Scarred and deathly pale hands clutched the package he had been handed and crinkled the note atop it once more. It was as if his body was a separate being and he was merely observing it. 

Dinner rose to try escaping him, the rich duck tasting fouled as his mind rebelled. Somehow, something had gone very wrong. Months ago, Geralt had knelt down on the cobblestones of a town square, had, for lack of coin and an abundance of care, begged the mage to take payment from his body for a cure. The little girl he had saved had looked so like Ciri, he hadn’t blinked twice at offering it. He had done so thinking the horrible feeling it had given him to do so, the humiliation and the weird spiraling thoughts was the worst of it, a lesser price in the grand scheme of things. Selling his body to save another in just one more way he was made to serve. 

Yet today, just a candle mark ago, he really grasped the depths of what he had done. Geralt’s palm slapped to his mouth and his knees tried to give out. He had never expected, would have tried to find any other way, he was a fool. He was always a fool. 

His throat burned where it felt thick and closed. He had to swallow repeatedly as he moved to settle the still closed package. The instructions in the note, fine sturdy parchment that it was, blurred before his eyes as he struggled to wrap his mind around how badly he had fucked up. Everything is his fault, it’s the same as- his mind jerks away from the thought like it burned. 

Geralt angrily strips himself of his armor, drawing the water directly into the bath, heating it to the point of discomfort with a mechanical efficiency that says nothing about how his thoughts are circling themselves in a vicious spiral that will go nowhere good. 

Eskel isn’t here. Geralt clenches his fist, the aching of the scars across his back only amplifying the nausea he is swallowing down so desperately. Eskel wouldn’t be here, because Geralt fucked up. It’s the same as when they were new graduates. It’s the exact same. Eskel wants him to do this, knows what it means. Geralt stares at the instructions as if they were a beast set to destroy him. 

He sinks into the water, hands doing what need done, the razor and lather and the swipe of blade over skin taking off something that feels rawer than being without his swords or armor in a crowded hall. Which, is what he will be doing tomorrow. 

The bright copper taste is back, this time with more of the greasy tar black bubbling, as he tries not to think about the way Eskel had looked as he turned away. Disgusted and defeated. Saying, “I get it, wolf. It’s always mattered more what you want than what I want. You want to save someone, you’ll get on your knees. I ask this of you, and it’s too much. Guess Galius was right.” 

Geralt has crushed the pressed soap, the thin slivers of it long and curling where it was pushed between his fingers. There is gulping for air and the razor is clean where he has flung it, no blood in the water for all he feels like he is being gutted. His shoulders are hitching and his entire frame is shaking as he feels that burning, clinging thickness in his throat, that he can not release no matter how he wishes he could. 

He is that idealistic teen again, the rope rough under his palms, Galius sneering as he spits on his face and the whip Eskel is wielding has been wailing through the air as there are ever more chants of “Harder!”. Geralt can’t remember if it was one of the dozen trainers or him shouting it. All that had mattered to him at the time was that he take all the lashes. That he get through all the blood that had to be paid, so Eskel wouldn’t have to take on as much. 

He heaved and everything juddered as his body tried to brace for blows so long gone they were barely noticeable on the roadmap of his scars. He has been whipped a dozen times since that night. Once far longer and harder than that night, but the sound of Eskel gasping raggedly as his blows faltered had hurt so much worse than anything else that night. Knowing that his own idiocy had caused that horror for Eskel as well. 

Just like it was his foolishness that caused this. He had never expected to hurt Eskel with his desperate bargain in Elswood. But it had. Oh it had. Eskel couldn’t trust him. Couldn’t come to him anymore. Couldn’t believe himself Geralt’s- his heart. The first soul he has ever felt so deeply for, has never stopped feeling for no matter what had happened. Geralt choked on nothing, scrubbing furiously at his hair. 

He oiled it and prepared it, fingers moving over his hairless chest and legs, determined that no matter how his mind is screaming, he will do this right. He will do everything for Eskel. That he wishes the words were different, were his, not some script, that this was something, that, it was possible for two witchers to ever have something like this in truth- he angrily scrubs at his feet, trying to ignore the tangled feelings. 

This is for Eskel’s Duke. This is for entertainment. This is a play. A farce. A display. Like the dancers and boudoir antics that Jaskier had so often wistfully spoken of. Geralt gave up his foolish hopes for this almost a century ago. It shouldn’t sting as it does to make his flowery prose of youth into some gaudy display. Let the Dukes get their titillation. They didn’t matter, Eskel had asked this of him. 

And Geralt can do nothing but try his best to make it as perfect as he can. The lines are as bad the tenth time he reads them as the first. He draws his bath twice more, tracing his body with the razor as he finds stray hairs, and then once more to be sure. He oils himself up and when he opens the package, he barely blinks at the humiliation of the garb. Or more the lack of it. It is all chains. Pretty hair ribbons in white and gold, chains to go over his ankles, arms, over his belly and drape across his shoulders. 

He looks like some sex slave from the darkest markets on the coast. He looks at himself and the impossible to tame libido that was the curse of his mutations kept his cock bobbing away despite how humiliated he felt. He was naked, the gold making his corpse grey skin look almost warmed. The hairless skin made the scars stand out, littered as they were across every inch of his skin. He is more scars than smooth flesh, he noted with a sneer, while glaring down at his body with disgust. His body wanted to bob and curl his cock with every step, somehow lewder and gaudier than all the chains and fancy ribbons in his hair. With a snarl of frustration, the dangling chain that draped his hips was pulled and tugged so it trapped his cock to his equally hard belly. 

The process of slicking his ass with the provided potion is only egging on the weird doubling of sensation. There had been no lube, the night he had been so foolish, so long ago. There had been no lube beyond his spit, when he bent over for the mage in Elswood. Why should he have lube this time. The softness of this plan made it all the worse. It made the awfulness that it wasn’t real that much worse. 

That was the worst of it, if it was real, if it was true, it would be worth any humiliation or horror. It would be worth anything if it were only possible. Geralt has to gulp air and begins to practice the lines written out for him. The sun rises and the halls bustle, as he repeats the lines till they become as easy as breathing no matter how they feel like glass shards in his chest. 

The 11th bell sees him reapplying the oil and stretching himself again, checking his hair and fussing as picky as any bride in a romance novel. He sneers at himself for it, for the part of him that still can have wishes- while consoling himself that he won’t fuck this up. He will do this. For Eskel.

He has to talk himself up into walking with his head held high, walking down the hall to the large room where this whole thing is about to happen. There are dozens of nobles lounging on little couches, some with their ladies, some with lads or courtesans. Every eye turns to him as the door is opened for him. Every step he takes has the faint tinkling of the golden chains. His cock is weeping where it rubs to his belly and the chain, caught and held up, proud as it is in ways he himself can not begin to grasp onto. 

But more than the nobles, he can not help but stare at Eskel. Can not help but have eyes only for the witcher who his heart has belonged with since before either were mutants. Geralt hitched a breath as he stared at the cheekbones below Eskel’s eyes, unsure of what and how this was ever going to be fixed. Each step closer to the broader man, covered in armor still, with those thick arms crossed tight to his body in a posture at war with how utterly defenseless he had asked Geralt to be. He felt echoes of the words Eskel had said, he couldn’t help looking at those lips and hating just a little that they had shaped them. Hated himself for having caused the hurt they were obviously based out of. He closed his own eyes and breathed in deeply as he came to stand before him. The flowery scents of the oils that coat his body overpower everything else.

Geralt has to get this moving. He may fall apart if he doesn’t. All he wants to do is beg Eskel to forgive him. Instead, he has to try to show him, to do his best for him. 

“I called you here, before my patron and yours, to ask you to become one with me. To bare yourself, as I am bearing myself. To take me, and-” He has to breathe through the words, humiliation and shame burning in him, the lines feeling tacky for how much some frail part of him feels they would be true if they were anything but the mutant tools they were made into.

He aches for the words he is mouthing so numbly to be more true than the words said to him last night- Geralt really is the slut who sold himself on the road- sold himself for healing another but still the truth remains. This is- nothing new for him. He could get on his knees to a mage to save a stranger, he could do this now. He is going to suck this up and do whatever it takes for Eskel to feel important to him again. This isn’t, they aren’t powerless teenagers anymore. He had felt like he had been struck, unsaid though it was last night, by the damage he had done to Eskel to cause the whole situation to have spiraled so horribly out of control. That Geralt would do anything to debase himself for a stranger- but it is asking him to make love that has him pausing and having such uncharacteristic hesitation. The bitter line as Eskel turned to walk away echoed. How it was telling how Geralt balked at this but had no problems performing any other time. Geralt wrested his mind away from that spiral, determined to not screw this up worse. He could do this.

Even if it’s just for a contract, his heart wants so badly for this to be a do-over. To be anything but another trial he has to go through to prove he isn’t the monster he feels he is inside. He swallows and tries again to meet Eskel’s eyes, shame and humiliation and that aching awful gut clenching swoop leaving his mouth feeling disconnected. He can’t manage it. The words come from memorization and practice in the mirror, more than any conscious thought.

“Prove that we can-” The word stumbles and trips into the air, and he wants to shove it back into his mouth, even with all the repetitions of these lines just hours before. “love. That we have love- before all those who have hired us for tasks and bodyguarding, for events and curses. Let us show them all, though we may be among the last of the Wolf School- we will be among the happiest. So no one can again say we witchers feel nothing. Please, accept me, do this, for me?” Geralt has to duck his head, to lower his lashes as despite the way the trials mutated him, he swears his eyes are trying to water. He wishes with all his heart that the words were any words but this. They have never again said their love so boldly, not since that horrible night in their teens. Never again shaped it and named it with such a weighty a word, not since they both went separately onto the path their first night after graduating from the school. To do so, falsely and for a contract, for an audience, makes the words he would otherwise want to keep parts of, feel slimy in his mouth. Acrid on his tongue. He would rather be whipped or beaten than have this all be false. 

They have never had to prove anything to each other. That isn’t what they are for. What they have ever been about. But then- Geralt had to fuck everything up. Had to go getting on his knees to save a girl and now… Here he is. Naked, shaved, draped in chains like some prize to be won, having to prove himself to ease the hurt he caused without ever realizing it.

He’s out of script, the rest was simply a request to wing it. He can’t. He feels like he is floating a foot above and behind himself. Nothing feels connected, and he isn’t sure how he is standing, as Eskel slides off his medallion and presses it to Geralt’s chest. It is somehow worse than that terrifying night, a lifetime ago, with those older Witchers threatening them both. His mind keeps bouncing between flashes of all the fear and pain and horror of that past experience being naked with Eskel before a watching audience, and the current moment, yet it was somehow not as immediately awful to his mind in this moment, as the idea that Eskel honestly thought so little of Geralt, now. He could not forget the disgust in Eskel’s eyes as he spat the words like they, and Geralt, disappointed him. He wants to turn away, and so urgently he can taste the tears he can not shed, he is desperate to cry as he hasn’t been able to since the first sear of potions into his body. He focuses on sensations lest he trip into his mind completely.

The metal is cool from having been over the armor, but the rough scarred hand is warmer, their slowed hearts meaning it isn’t as warm as a human hand, but not as cool as many of the monsters in the wilds. This same hand, cupping over his heart, has meant love and safety and home, for as long as Geralt wishes to remember, and well before then too.

The silence drags out and it is awful, his jaw clenches and he wants to break, wants to ask why Eskel would ask this of him at all let alone like that. Why he would make him bare all his scars, his body like this, before everyone. Make him say these words, make him mention love, when all his memories of that heavy word are tainted with the not screams and horrors that followed as they were dragged from their bed that long ago night.

“Always had to be a dramatic bastard. Thought you’d grown out of this shit.” He hears as well as feels the words, in that familiar and rueful tone. It cuts through the spiral he is being pulled into despite himself. Geralt’s eyes fly to meet Eskel’s and there is a further swooping sensation. Horrible and terrible and- Eskel, the Eskel he grew up with looks unsure, wrong footed and like he is forcing himself to try to relax despite a matching sort of strain. Looks raw and like Geralt is the one asking the impossibly awful thing of him. Like somehow they are staring at each other deciding who will whip and make the other bloody first, as if there was ever any other answer than the way they chose so long ago. It was Geralt’s words. And he could take far more punishment than Eskel. This time is- for a contract. To prove himself. He needs to prove himself and not leave Eskel feeling so hurt.

Another swallow on Geralt’s part is matched on Eskel’s before Geralt manages to reply, the words ash on his tongue despite how he quirks a self mocking little smile at the corner of his lips, “Geralt Roger Eric du Haute-Bellegarde, didn’t so much go away as get told to be less silly.” It shouldn’t help, it shouldn’t feel like now they’re in this together. Like this is going to be forgiveness and something- he could want. Something he nearly hysterically thinks could be real, if he manages to do each part just so.

Eskel pulled him closer, and whispered, too soft to be for show, to be for anything but Geralt “You’re a rat bastard- couldn’t tell me you loved me in bed- no, had to do some big fake witcher marriage thing. Couldn’t believe it when you showed up last night saying you had a big surprise event for me to be part of today.” He pulled back, kissing him soundly and saying louder for everyone watching, “I will gladly marry you, become one as only we can.” He says, but there is a softness to his eyes and smile that at any other time would melt Geralt instantly. It’s everything he had wanted at seventeen and so impossibly hopeful.

Geralt instead felt suddenly cold, his swooping gut leaving him completely as it seemingly fell through his feet, only clammy horror creeping into it’s place.

A doppler. Last night. It came to him, it came to Eskel. They both are unarmed. There are a dozen or more nobles sitting around and watching, and any one of them- or none, could be the mastermind behind this. He gulped air and for a dizzying second he felt like the world itself was stopping, like he had to hold onto the spikes of Eskel’s shoulder armor or fly off the ground and be lost to the skies.

Eskel thought this farce was his way of declaring his love. And he was accepting it. He- Geralt would hurt him, really destroy him, if he told him the truth now. A horrible giddy part of him now cheered at how Eskel hadn’t been hurt by his actions at Elswood. Not the thing he should be focusing on but the thing he was anyways. It made him feel light inside with the sudden clarity, it hadn’t been Eskel insinuating how he had opened himself for others but- wouldn’t do this. For him. Geralt would always do anything for Eskel. Always. It had hurt so much to think that Eskel had been so hurt he hadn’t just asked no matter how big and heavy the request. They could have struggled through it together. It would have been how it would be handled before, something they discussed and worked together on, and that lost closeness had hurt as much as that they were doing it at all, but now?

Geralt gave a choked sound, kissing Eskel hard, some tight bands of ice and horror unwinding from where they were stabbed into his ribs while others sliced at his heart. There was still the doppler. They were still being watched- but this? He presses his forehead to Eskel’s and throws himself into this as fully as he ever did any foolish and dangerous thing with Eskel in their youth.

Their trainers had once gathered them up, making them hold each other down for the whole lot of them to fuck, making them hurt each other with whips and words. Making them both do horrible things to show them Witchers can not love. Not like that. Witchers can not be married, as they, Geralt, had so foolishly talked of, mistakenly thinking them alone when in a distant corridor on the eve of their departure from the school.

The watching trainers had given cold orders as they reminded them both of the truths that would be repeated with every cruelty they were ordered to commit. They could never run away from the path. They could never value each other over the humans they were made to serve. They bled for each other, but they could not cry for themselves or each other, then. Just as now, a century and change later, they can not cry for different emotions, while performing before all these nobles. Geralt kisses him like he would die without him, and Eskel, fingers sliding into his hair with equal fervor, kisses him just as desperately.

There are sounds, people are watching, nobles, the bed that dominates this raised corner of the room is beautiful, a bed fit for any pampered virginal bride from a boudoir book of knightly tales and sordid endings. But there will be no child made here, no red stained sheets nor pricking of fingers to achieve them. There is just Geralt’s hands finding the latches to Eskel’s armor as easily and efficiently as his own.

It is, for all that they can ever have, a moment of peace. It’s something they both were tricked into, something they were maneuvered into for malice or lust, Geralt could not say. But as long as he never tells Eskel about that- it… It can be one pure thing he gives, without shadows cloaking it. Well, in at least one of their minds. He can’t forget the copper and bile of the last half day, but maybe with time the licorice and clove of Eskel’s mouth will supplant it.

After all, it had taken decades for them both to fully reclaim their passions from one brutal night at the orders of their trainers. Even after a pogrom and the death of all the trainers involved, so many years ago, it had been such a slow process of replacing flinching with arching, caught breath with moans. Geralt has to stop, to kiss Eskel again while they both work to pull off the spiked armor.

When Eskel meets his eyes, there is a wonder, and a lingering, hastily smothered flinch, when a chair creaks and a hum issues from a watching noble’s throat. It is half instinct to move his hands to cup those strong cheeks, one craggy and deeply scarred the other stubbled and filling his own calloused palms. This time the kiss goes on much longer. He knows those watching and listening have not left, yet he keeps the kiss till the shivering down his spine is more lust than nerves.

Geralt's voice is pitched just for Eskel, as he keeps them forehead to forehead. "We are having that happy ending. Cemented. Reclaimed. After this- we're." His breath hitches and the only way to make this real, to reclaim this from the doppler is to change the meaning. Change the script. "We're leaving the path. I have a winery. I want- to take the power of those bastard trainers from them, and give it back to us." He shivers again as he says it, firm as leaping into the abyss can only be done whole heartedly.

It's worth it, as Eskel takes over the kiss, determined and taking control in a way he was hesitating to do before. Passionate and driven and not flinching, or at least not as much. It means Geralt can let go, can stop leading and... try to make this moment, and the moments that follow, the most important part of the day. Just their love, just this kiss, just an impossible marriage finally made possible. That was what mattered, not any other moment that came before it.

**Author's Note:**

> Please feed the author comments, and any sharing of this fic on tumblr or remixes is welcomed eagerly!
> 
> I really hope Jill enjoys this, and everyone else too.


End file.
